The End of Sitting workplace is nothing if not unique and thought-provoking. To take a look at The End of Sitting, visit this website (it’s hard to appreciate the findings of the studies noted below without checking out the workplace images): https://www.archdaily.com/574795/the-end-of-sitting-raaaf
Caljouwde Haan, Mollee and Withagen report that, “Rietveld-Architecture-Art-Affordances acknowledged the public health concern of sitting too much and developed The End of Sitting – a workspace without chairs that provides a variety of supported standing positions. In the current study middle-aged office workers were to use the End of Sitting for one hour per week over a ten-week period…we found that the self-reported office task performance (concentration, quality of work, productivity), mood (energized, wellbeing, pleasantness) and postural comfort were not negatively affected by working in this new office environment compared to their conventional workplace.”
Withagen and Caljouw in 2016 reported on the same The End of Sitting location: “The End of Sitting, is a sculpture whose surfaces afford working in several non-sitting postures (e.g. lying, standing, leaning)…It was found that 83% of participants worked in more than one non-sitting posture in The End of Sitting. All these participants also changed location in this working environment. On the other hand, in the conventional office all but one participant sat on a chair at a desk during the entire work session. On average, participants reported that The End of Sitting supported their well-being more than the conventional office. Participants also felt more energetic after working in The End of Sitting. No differences between the working environments were found in reported concentration levels and satisfaction with the created product.”
S. Caljouw, E. de Haan, N. Mollee, and R. Withagen. “The End of Sitting: How Middle-Aged Employees Use and Experience a New Activity-Inducing Office Over Time.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envp.2019.01.001
R. Withagen and S. Caljouw. 2016. “’The End of Sitting’: An Empirical of Working in an Office of the Future.” Sports Medicine, vol. 46, no. 7, pp. 1019-1027, doi: 10.1007/s40279-015-0448-y.
Sally Augustin, PhD,a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.